Lex Dei moralis, ceremonialis, et politica, ex libris Mosis excerpta, et in certas classes distributa

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Since it cannot be said without manifest blasphemy that the Holy Spirit spoke anything through the mouth of the Prophets that was either superfluous, or not in its proper place and time, some will surely wonder at this plan of mine, and perhaps even greatly condemn it as being full of audacity. To those, therefore, I wish to make it clear, as the thing itself proclaims, that nothing was less proposed to me than to break the series of Sacred history, into which the Lord did not wish his laws to be inserted rashly, or to cut away as redundant what has sometimes been repeated, which I confess cannot be done without great wickedness. Rather, I have studied only this: that having distributed the Law of the Lord into its three chapters, I might subsequently gather them into their classes, and (as the jurists say) into their rubrics, wherever they refer to any one argument. For I hoped it would be pleasant for readers not only to view in one glance what otherwise must be sought from diverse places not without great difficulty, but I also believed it would be most useful both for aiding the memory and for extracting the true interpretation of the laws themselves from the mutual comparison of passages, since in providing and writing these laws, the Lord so tempered everything to the capacity of His people (which I learned by experience itself when I was interpreting these first in sermons, and then in the school) that what He explains more briefly and obscurely in one place, He explains more fully and clearly in another. I have undertaken this work, whatever it may be, with the greater confidence because I have as my guide that greatest man, who is above all praise, D. John Calvin, my former teacher, whose judgment I have always valued so highly, and deservedly so, that what I did with him as my authority, I persuaded myself could hardly displease good and learned men. Nor, however, have I followed the order instituted by him in everything, since his plan was somewhat different from this project of mine. For he had no other proposal than to reduce all other laws, both ceremonial and civil, without discrimination, to those ten commandments in which all Law is contained; but my plan, moreover, was to distribute the laws themselves into their chapters and their classes one by one, so that all might immediately understand both to which commandment each law is to be referred, and on what matter they were written. If I learn that this labor of mine has pleased Christian readers, I will add, God willing, the true commentaries of the Law itself, namely the prophetic sermons distributed in the same series, and referred to the same places: which I trust will be most pleasant and at the same time useful to all students of true Theology. Farewell, whoever you are, and favor our labors. Geneva, February 24, in the year of the last time, 1577.